I'm very amature at photo editing but I do want something that is going to give me some tools and editing power. I want to start taking more pictures in raw format for editing. Is CS4 overkill, would lightroom be enough? Or are there other products that I havn't mentioned I should consider? Does CS4 support raw format? Sorry for so many questions, like I said I'm novice when it comes to this kind of software and what I really need. Thank you for your opinions!

When I started with photography a little over a year ago I tried out all kinds of editing software as trial versions. I tried Lightroom 2; Phase One, Capture one; Nikon Capture NX2; Photoshop Elements 7 and maybe a few more.

I loved the speed of editing in Lightroom 2 and bought that first. It does have its limits as it can't correct barrel distortion or stitch panoramas or such, but I wasn't too bothered by that. (It can correct vignetting, chromatic aberration and reduce ISO-noise.)

A few weeks ago I also bought Elements 8 to allow me to stitch a panorama and correct barrel distortion after I edit a picture in Lightroom. It makes a good compliment.

I'm also looking into Nik Software Plugins for Lightroom to make Lightroom more powerful, but that's something for the longer term as it's as expensive as Lighroom itself.

All in all I prefer Lightroom as my main editor and enjoy the features of Elements to compliment it. It can also be the other way around for a photographer who doesn't shoot exclusively in raw. Elements is cheaper and still allows raw processing.
The best thing is to use the trial versions and try out what kind of editing you prefer to do.